Siyabonga Mkhwanazi
SOUTH Africa would start the process to procure a nuclear fleet to generate 9 600 megawatts of power from July, the energy minister said.
Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson confirmed yesterday in Parliament that the winning party would be announced before the end of the year. South Africans are dealing with regular rolling blackouts.
The minister assured the country that the nuclear deal would be done in a fair, transparent and cost-effective manner, with no underhand tactics.
However, opposition MPs accused the government of doing a deal with the Russians, after they initially went public about it last year forcing the government to backtrack.
Speaking during her budget vote, Joemat-Pettersson said the nuclear programme would be implemented as it was the policy of government, adopted in 2008. She said the government had undertaken several processes with vendor countries to workshop their technology. These include Russia, China, Korea, France and the US.
She said South Africa had signed inter-governmental agreements with these countries, laying the foundation for co-operation, trade and exchange of technology.
“The requisite parliamentary processes for ratification of these agreements will follow,” she said.
Joemat-Pettersson did not say how the new nuclear power stations would be funded. South Africa wants to build six nuclear plants by 2030.
Joemat-Pettersson also said South Africa, which runs Africa’s only nuclear power station near Cape Town, would also re-establish its nuclear fuel cycle industry.
Strong objection
The nuclear programme will go ahead despite strong objection from opposition MPs that this is costly and will cripple the country.
The planned nuclear programme is estimated to cost between R400 billion and R1 trillion.
Opposition parties said they had already smelt corruption in the nuclear deal.
DA MP Ian Ollis said that the announcement by Joemat-Pettersson was irresponsible.
He said there was no money in the fiscus to carry out such a massive expansive programme.
The EFF described the deal with the Russians as shrouded in secrecy, smacking of corruption, and called on Joemat-Pettersson to come clean on the deal. The minister said she was unperturbed by the opposition MPs as nuclear was part of the energy mix programme of the government. – Additional reporting by Reuters and Bloomberg